Hungary 2003, 1.85:1, 90 minutes, in colour.
Director and screenwriter: Benedek Fliegauf. Cinematography: Zoltán Lavasi. Film Editor: Lili Fodor. Leading cast: Rita Braun, Barbara Csonka, Laszio Cziffer.
Screened as part of the Magyar Masterpieces retrospective at Leeds International Film Festival.
This is a challenging and certainly very original film. I found it riveting, but even by the end I was unsure about what exactly I had seen. Never mind, it is a great 90 minutes of cinema.
The film opens outside what appears to be a Department Store with crowds of people entering and leaving. The camera seems to pick on a character or characters and follow them: only to change its mind and follow another. The credits follow. Then we view a series of vignettes, with short interludes. Some characters appear several times, some only once. The little dramas are mainly abrasive as one character upbraids another.
In order of appearance we see a young woman (Kati) return to her flat and find her friend (Barbara), a sleeping man with a dog and a can of gasoline. Two young men discuss an unseen and distinctly odd pet. A husband and wife discuss the husband’s attitude and treatment of their ten-year-old daughter. By a river two men tell a young woman a story about an accident and a giant catfish. A couple, seemingly married, row about the contents of a man’s knapsack and his dead friend. A young woman recounts a disturbing dream to her boyfriend. Barbara and Kati re-appear in a wood, arguing because Barbara has lost the map. The young couple re-appear sitting round a campfire, there seem to be other people there.
Here the film fades into darkness and we are left with the sound of the flickering flames. Now the film reprises the opening sequence outside the store. We are able to identify the various characters from the vignettes, either leaving or waiting outside. It seems exactly the same as the opening sequence, though I thought there was a slight but significant additional action.
The various little dramas have a lot going on in them: more than suggested above. They seem very separate, but tantalisingly as the film continues there are suggestive overlaps. Moreover, there are interludes between the vignettes when some of the characters briefly re-appear, though involved in what is never clear.
The film’s style bear some comparison to the Dogme School of filmmaking. The film is shot in a restless, constantly mobile way, using a hand-held camera, and featuring mainly close-ups with the occasional long shot. I noted only one long shot in the main film: a woman stands looking over a partly urban hillside. There are however long takes or sequence shots, brining a sense of candour to the scenes. These include constant whip pans back and forth between the various characters. The sound design is also extremely important. Most of the film relies on naturalistic sound, with the only music occurring in the interludes. The cast is composed entirely of non-professionals: “It was very low budget. The actors were friends of mine . . . They are normal people who were from my surroundings. With non-actors I cast very close to the character . . .” (Benedek Fliegauf).
There are also aspects that seem troublingly inconsistent. The man with the can of gasoline brings the dog to Kati, and, presumably leaves it with her. We do not see it again, but it is in both the opening and closing sequences. Here a young woman, whom I think we do not see in the main part of the feature, is walking it on a lead? And there are other, presumably deliberate, ambiguity.
The film achieves that intense in-your-face effect found in the best Dogme films. One becomes deeply interested in the various characters. The less abrasive episodes offer a sort of relaxation between the heavy encounters. I am still puzzling out the interconnections between all these segments. It is like a fine poem. The lines, or here the images and sounds, lodge in one memory: evocations on which you can dwell with pleasure or carry on attempting to analyse.
itp Global Film 